Few can better claim to have
felt the sheer power of the stormy seas than those living during the winter of
1025 a.S. on the eastern coast of Manthria
beneath the Mithral Mountains.
For three hard days a storm now known as the Storm of Three Nights blasted the
coast, ravaging, destroying and demolishing. A famous myth tells of how this
event was the epitome of Baveras’ wrath
at the death of a sea creature that had existed since the beginnings of time.

Image description.Dramatic scenes from the
Storm of Three Nights when the Gods took revenge on the villagers of Neprs -
or so lore tells us. Picture by Seeker.

Description. The
Compendium, of course, strives
for objectivity in all things. Although the fragments of first-person accounts
included in this entry seem far removed from this ideal, the descriptions
provided in them paint a vivid picture of a cataclysm of the likes of which the
Manthrian coastline has rarely seen. As
such, some of the descriptions below may be graphic or disturbing. Most of
these are from various journals and diaries of people suffering the force of
this hurricane, and so contain imagery of painful events possibly distressing
for some. This is also an event that, though scattered reports exist, was
neither carefully nor completely chronicled at the time. The meagerness of the
snippets of writing available to base research on has led to some inference and
educated guesswork in describing this terrible storm.

31st, Passing Clouds. Dramatic weather changes are
certainly not uncommon near the coast of the Adanian Sea, but the suddenness
and ferocity of the weather change that took place on this day is positively
frightening. Despite a sunny, cloudless day,
just before dusk the calm waters took a
turn. Dark clouds rolled in overhead, and the thick fog, notoriously
ever-present on this coastline, became blindingly thick, casting a dismal mood
on the region. Just before dark, the sky opened up.

The following journal excerpt is a rare account written by a (foolish) nobleman
who was on the ship that hunted the oldest of the Sea Tartuas. Though he died
at sea, lost to the storm, understandable fragments of his last diary entry
have survived.

“…our last day hunting… wanted to stay out… long as we could… long since
given…hopeless. Heading back towards shore… Strait of Kharamm and we couldn’t
see our own hands in the fog. Storm had threatened since dusk, and suddenly…
rain, thunder, everybody screaming of judgement from the heavens. We… told us
to leave the sail up... but wind changed direction… blown towards
Nightfogs. Sail in tatters,
ripped... vang fringed on the block. Wave… Four overboard. Another… coming we…
di-”

Obviously the account was cut off, presumably with the reference to “another”
being another, possibly larger wave. A few parts of the ship and this journal
along with other articles, washed onto shore, but few bodies have been found. A
careful search of the seafloor on the west side of the
Nightfog Cliffs might render some
skeletons, but the dark and imposing nature of the cliffs prevents all but the
most adventurous of Avennorian
pearl divers from exploring.

Though journal entries from all the ships out at sea on this fateful night are
obviously unavailable this was certainly not the only one. Along with smaller
fishing vessels, a staggering number of merchant vessels bound for
Marduran or
Ciosa were lost. Rumours were told of a pair of Shipwreck Wyrms that had
come out of roosts on either side of the entrance to the Strait of Kharamm, and
were marauding up and down the coast from
Mossy Rocks Cove to Snipe’s Head
Bay. Sailors who managed to beach there ships before being destroyed by the
storm told stories of these terrible beasts in inns from
Holt to
Kolbruk, but proof of these claims was in
short supply, and the great drakes were never seen again after the storm had
abated. Locally, many older children who had last been seen heading out for the
Needle’s Eye were also later
reported lost. Likely these children attempted to run for shore when the storm
hit rather than wait for it to pass in one of the caves on the island. Despite
our knowledge of their fate, they made the best decision, for the rising water
level quickly flushed out any chance of their survival within those tunnels.

An eerie silence struck the land as the storm marched inward. Scattered ships
between Quios and the Mithral coast reported heavy storms, though they felt
only the tail end. Most of these upon perceiving the pounding the coastline was
receiving made for either Quios or Ciosa to
wait out the storm.

Right before late night became early morning, the records of many who were on
shore describe the storm making landfall. This next excerpt comes from a
teenage girl, the daughter of a wealthy landowner outside of
Marduran. Her fate is unknown, though this
diary was found lying, very battered but intact, in the locked writing desk of
an abandoned house along Jamliso’s Bend. A leather case kept it drier than many
other things left to the mercy of this hurricane.

“Always we have storms in the winter. Heavy rains, thunder cracking,
making me lurch in my chair every few seconds; this is a common
experience. They blend into a single memory in my mind, arriving suddenly,
and without warning, only to pass just as suddenly. So as I look out my
window on a beautiful day turned an ugly night, and the threat of a storm
hanging in the air, I cannot understand this feeling. Why, in the pit of
my stomach, do I feel a lump? I ate dinner, and it has not passed. Though
I have sipped a cup of basiloc tea dry, it will not quit it. It is fear:
this dark night will not pass like the others."

Later

“I know that though my fear may be irrational, this storm will not blend
like the others. It is not the same. A few minutes ago, as I sat in my
room by the candlelight, it began. I watched a sheet of water, falling in
torrents into the sea, and then onto the cliffs, and then onto the grass,
suddenly crashed over my house. Since then, the incessant pounding of the
rain refuses to quiet, its sound dulling the rhythmic beating of my own
fearful heart. Never can I remember rain like this; a blanket of water
than seems to be trying to drown the house. I also remember the thunder.
In this storm, the crackling lightening always preceded by a bang has
abandoned its method. The thunder is continuous. There is no respite from
the constant pounding; like war drums upon the horizon. I must be too loud
in my quaking, for I hear my mother on the stairs. She is coming to tell
me not to fear, to go to bed. She doesn’t understand. I do fear: I fear
what I will wake up to at dawn. Good night."

Though obviously emotional and plagued with the fears of a young girl, this
account is fairly accurate in the necessities. Rain crashed onto the shore just
before the midnight hour, furiously pounding away. It certainly did not abate
during the rest of the night. The owner of this diary may well have awoken to
her worst fears.

Hit hardest tonight during the brief period when the storm actually was ashore
were the houses, presumably like this girl’s, that were right along the
coastline. Seaside settlements such as Nepris
and Marduran took a pounding, but were of
course easily able to weather these first few hours of storminess: built on the
coastline, that’s what they were designed to do when built.

1st, Dead Tree. The dawn was almost
indistinguishable from the night as black storm clouds remained overhead, and
the people of the Manthrian coastline were
battered by the torrential rains that flooded houses and streets, and washed
away anything not secured. Waves of unimaginable size crashed down upon the
coast, a few rising up over the small cliffs that normally sheltered the inland
communities from the sea.

By the end of the day, a terrible sense of doom was circling amongst the towns
and cities lining the coast. Harsh temperatures, powerful rain and hail,
roaring thunder and ferocious winds made it
dangerous to step outside. In Marduran,
the docks were almost immediately destroyed by the waves, and the guard houses
flooded. Evacuations of the areas immediately threatened by waves occurred
rapidly as people fled in terror, but many were trapped and lost.

Meanwhile, the most harshly punished village,
Nepris, was practically underwater. The docks were destroyed, whole houses
carried away by the punishing waves, and many families had taken to boats;
paddling inland.

Although bizarre, there is one story of this
storm so well documented that it cannot rightfully be considered lore, but
should instead be taken at face value. Women of
Nepris frequently visit
Toran’s Falls, often walking to either the top of the falls near
Nogerinth’s Tomb, or to the lower falls on a separate path where bending
willows create a peaceful place of contemplation. At the break of dawn on this
tempestuous morning, a small group of women whose husbands were at sea the
night before made the short trek to meditate and pray together, begging mercy
from the Wild and Untamed One for themselves and their husbands, She who
fishing villages like Nepris both love and
fear: Baveras, Goddess of the Sea.
Slogging through the downpour, the women hiked into the hills. Upon arriving at
the lower part of Toran’s Falls,
they saw a terrifying sight. Ithrid, an elder of the village, wrote a famous
account of the experience days later, that has since been corroborated by
others, and been included here.

I believe everyone
raised in a coastal fishing village develops a respect for the power of
the sea, and She who directs the waves and the storms, as a power beyond
measure. As such, the decision we made to visit the place near the base of
the falls where we used to worship
Baveras once a week in the most dismal weather imaginable, was driven
by fear and respect. From the village we could see dark clouds swirling
around Crazy Woman Pass, and
far below, Toran’s Falls
appeared to have been swallowed by the storm. On that terrible morning,
this testament to peace, this serene location which is normally a symbol
of nature’s perfection, was a reminder of the awe-inspiring dominion of
water. At the base of
Toran’s Falls the purling creek had become a roaring river of white
water from the Falls. The teaming drove
the swirling river down, making it overflow it’s old bed, taking with it
trees, rocks, or any unlucky creatures nearby. However a little further
down, where the ridge forces the creek to bend to the east, we encountered
a sight few could believe. The amiable creek was gone, replace by a
formidable torrent of water, the roar
of waves crashing and swirling skyward in a helix, carrying silt, sand and
stones, overpowering even the roar of the thunder.

At that moment I knew; the Goddess of the Sea who holds sway in our lives
was angered beyond reason or control, and her mercy would be nothing short
of damnation. With the help of Grothar,
she would devestate the shore. Shards of hail and the incessant rain
pounded down on us, branches blew in the unyielding
winds, and thunder clapped overhead. As
a group we all recognized in that solemn moment, that if
Baveras demanded our lives, we
would have no choice but to relinquish them.

Despite the religious overtones of this
emotional account, this mystical story goes a long way in expressing the sheer
helplessness of the scene felt up and down the Mithral Coast. By nightfall,
death was becoming a common chance occurrence as people were swept away by
waves and drowned, or trapped in the wreckage of flooded lands. This religious
miracle became famous after the storm, and a larger sanctuary, a temple of
peaceful beauty and tranquility was erected on the spot where the helix roared
in the hills. It still stands today, and the short walk to this mystic hallowed
ground receives regular visitors.

2nd, Dead Tree.
The storm penetrated even further inland on the second full day, and as it
climbed higher into the Mithral
Mountains, even the hearty Thergerim of
the Mithrals began to feel the
danger. The dwarves later reported sealing
many tunnels, hiding deep in the earth as thunder clashed on the mountainside,
snow buried the trails, and massive pieces of hail pounded down. The
aboveground plots of the dwarves were almost
all flooded and ruined. Having sturdier shelter and deep, cavernous recesses to
hide in, few dwarves were lost, although tunnel collapses and caverns filled
with water led to a few deaths.

Meanwhile, the situation at the base of these massive peaks became desperate.
The village of Nepris was being pounded to
dust, its structure all but nonexistent and its population dwindling. The
people of Marduran kept retreating further
and further inland, and all semblance of law disappears as chaos descends upon
a town assailed by sea and sky. Those living closer to the ocean not carried
off by the waves bought (or stole) what they could and fled towards the Outer
City. The temple of Grothar for which
the city was well known was all but overrun. The wealthiest houses were plagued
by rioting city-dwellers, desperate for shelter, and many were violently forced
to open their doors to all manner of refugees. The village of Starmiran, while
unhurt by the waves, was forced to play host to many of these wandering lost
souls. Jorn Geir Ranring, a wealthy partial owner of the Ducatri shipyard,
wrote an indignant account. He was later murdered by these same “guests” after
he purportedly stabbed one of them when the man wiped his muddy hands on
Ranring’s hérin’sufár table cloth.

The undesirables have become intolerable! Early this morning I was forced to
open my doors to this filth, wet and grimy, and offer them the comforts of my
food and fire. My entire stock of seaweed
bread; a winter’s worth of sustenance, gone in a day! This pestilence is
intolerable. Perhaps if these poor fools had the foresight to get
Mitharim advice on stone housing
construction when building their own dwellings, theirs would still be standing
and I would not be plagued by this nonsense.

The storm continued unabated. Rain (or snow in the mountains) combined with
hail, heavy winds, and perpetual thunderclaps
made the situation seem, if anything, worse than the day before. This third
night brought now relief.

3rd Dead Tree.
The break of dawn saw the rapid subsidence of some of the fiercer weather
effects. The storm resolved into itself, and becomes no more than a steady
rain, a pitiful drizzle that cast a dismal gloom on a land ravaged by a
tempest.

By midafternoon, even this rain had tapered off, but the chill of a bitter
winter set in, accompanied by a gloomy blackness of clouds and air so thick and
heavy it seemed to weigh on the spirits of those forced to look upon the wreck
of the land they had known all their lives.

More reports were sent to Marcogg by cities
from Sunth to Whitewater Keep begging
for relief and telling the
Thane of the
crisis. Two of these, one from what remained of
Nepris’s elders and one from the fragmented administration in
Marduran, have been included here.

Your Grace,
It is with great pain that I must write this account, for our once great
town has been driven to ruin these past few days. Marduran is in need of
support, for anarchy has gripped the region. The Storm of Three Nights, as
this recent cataclysm has so aptly been called, led to the death of nigh
on 250 people from what we know so far, and many suspect this number to be
low. The rule of law has all but disappeared here, the Rural Districts
have been ravaged and many stores of grain and vegetables, which are hard
to attain along this coast under normal circumstances, have been stolen or
lost. We beg of you, send aid. Soldiers are needed to restore order,
builders are needed to restore homes, and food is needed to ensure that
those who have survived last the winter. These dark times will get only
darker if the response to this is not immediate.

Your Honour,
She who rules the seas and holds sway in our fates has taken everything
but our lives. We beseech your Highness for relief in this most terrible
of days. The receding waves have carried with them the last scraps of our
once bountiful fishing village, along with the lives of 120 of our kith
and kin; more than half of those who lived in what was once our quiet
village of Nepris, and what is now a ruin. We have no ships for which we
rely on for food in the winter months, our meager stores of food were
carried off in the floods, and even our homes were lost. We have
reconstructed a makeshift fort for shelter further inland for the time
being, but we will not last the brutal winter that has already set in. We
beg of you for aid, help us survive Baveras’ wrath, help us to live
through this misery.

Yours in grief and desperation,
The Nepris Council of Elders

The
Thane’s
response was slow to come, and the needed aid even slower. The calamity had
ended, but the repercussions would rock the Mithral Coast for a generation.

Effects. In larger
port cities such as Sunth and Marduran, the anarchy that took hold was
catastrophic. In the latter especially, all semblance of government control was
lost, and the first step was to restore relative calm. The Thane did eventually
send soldiers, fearful of a larger movement, and the displaced victims were
shepherded back to the dockside streets, to begin the tasks of salvaging and
rebuilding. A serious eye was turned towards architectural integrity in all of
these towns following this event, and in the rebuilding of
Marduran, more care is taken in orderly
construction. The docks and warehouses of the city became the most
well-organized sectors, with wider, securely built escape routes and the
creation of a few seaside stone walls with the assistance of the
dwarves (no doubt to Ranring’s delight, were
he alive).

The dwarves recovered quickly as well,
although the destruction of their above-ground plots was no small loss.
Although a few living in Tyr Donian assisted the brutally destroyed
human villages on the coast, most the
dwarves retreated to their caverns for the
season, relying on their stores for survival. The few that did leave the
security of the earth often sold their services as builders for projects such
as the Marduran docks.

For the once-proud hamlet of Nepris, a
return to normalcy was not nearly so quick. Homes had been swept away,
livelihoods of families that had lived there for generations uncounted gone in
an instant. Only the unparalleled determination and skill that is so common in
Avennorians allowed the 86
remaining villagers to survive the winter with only three deaths. Nevertheless,
the bitterness of the season, short of food and warmth, cannot be overstated.

All the pestilences of large storms were also seen up and down the coastline.
Game animals had been driven inland, trees uprooted and carried off, and
shortage of freshwater led to a constant risk of dehydration.

Picture description. An artist's
depiction of the storm's approach, bearing the wrath of the
Goddess of the Sea, Baveras. Image by Faugar.

Myth/Lore. Tales of
this epitome of Baveras‘ wrath run
rampant, but one has eclipsed all the others, likely because it is based in
fact. Forthwith is a record of the way one can hear it told by the elders of
Nepris, when the village gathers on the
anniversary of the storm to tell the story every year, and traverses the path
to the famous temple together in reverent memory of the raging Goddess.

Who can say why they decided to risk the wrath of
She Who Controls the Seas, but the
gathering to hunt the Old Woman of the Ocean, the last of the Sea Tartuas, was
an affair that captured the attention of men from this village, from
Marduran, and started talk in every inn up
and down this coast. It is said that the giant sea turtles were great friends
of Baveras, wise and beautiful, and the
slow decline of these gargantuan beasts was a great sorrow to her. One of these
in particular, the Old Woman of the Sea, was a turtle of such magnificent
proportions that its could be mistaken for a reef when surfacing. Beautiful
were these shells, every manner of coral growing on them, a moving ecosystem.
Their base was pearly in colour, streaked with silver and gold. Unfortunately,
the beauty of the shell of the Old One was also his undoing, for the greed in
the hearts of men raised in an environment filled with beautiful pieces of
dwarven craftsmanship led them to hunt him. But
Baveras loved the Tartuas, and the Old
One was an especial friend to her, having seen the birth of the world, the rise
and fall of millenia, coexisting in the sea with her. The decision of the men
to hunt the creature was their undoing, however, for it led to all the hardship
and wretchedness for which we are still thankful to have escaped.

Sightings of the Old One were common enough; often the beast would surface, and
sailors would spot her from afar, unable to get close before she sank back
beneath the waves. However that greed, that terrible greed, led a group of men
to begin a hunt. Three ships embarked near the end of Passing Clouds on the
hunt for the Elder Tartuas. Whalers hoping to (literally) strike gold, and
simple fishermen groping for adventure climbed aboard as well. For many weeks
the hunters would return every few days, cursing their luck, unable to find the
creature. On the 30th they set out once more, and were never seen again,
although the wreck of one of the ships has supposedly been found. What occurred
seems painfully clear. One or more of the ships happened upon the creature, and
in some stroke of misfortune, succeeded in ending the life of a being with
experience more vast and terrible than these poor fools could hope to
understand. The wrath of Baveras at the
death of her friend was cataclysmic. The terrible
Sea Goddess beseeched
Grothar to visit his power upon the
Avennorian fishing towns, and
together they claimed their revenge. Our own village was destroyed, and for
three nights death and and misery reigned. On the morning of the third, the
wind and hail receeded, leaving only the
rain, the tears of a Goddess suffering the loss of her oldest of friends.